Our second reading by Wasserstrom is his 1984 article “Roles
and Morality.”[1]

Here Wasserstrom continues to address the differences
between what is morally appropriate for human beings in general, qua
moral agents, and what is appropriate for people qua occupants of
certain roles. In particular, he is examining why these differences are
potentially morally problematic.

In this later article, he focuses not on role-defined behavior
but instead on role-defined reasoning.

[3.2.1.] Two Ways of Reasoning about Obligations.

Wasserstrom describes two ways ofreasoning about
what one should and should not do:

role-defined reasoning [RDR]: “places weight upon the
role that the person occupies and locates concerns about how one ought to
behave within a context of what is required, expected, or otherwise appropriate
of persons occupying that role.” (25-26)

moral reasoning [MR]: this is more universalistic and
less particularistic than RDR, in that it “has to do with an overriding
concern for the welfare or happiness, broadly understood, of individual
persons.” (28)[2]

By calling the second sort of reasoning “moral,” Wasserstrom
does not mean to imply that RDR is immoral or that it is bad in any other way. (Were
he to do that, he would be begging the question—assuming in advance the
truth of some claim that one should really be arguing for.)In fact, he
calls RDR “a kind of moral reasoning.” (25) One of the aims of this article is
to examine whether or not specific instances of RDR are morally
permissible.

[3.2.2.] Role-Defined Reasoning.

Wasserstrom considers a number of different examples of RDR:

1.parents:
[Wasserstrom used this same example in his earlier article.] “If parents were
ever pressed to justify, as they seldom are, why it is right that they do and
should prefer the interests of their children over those of any or all of the
other children in the world, it would surely be on the ground that their role
as the parents of these children requires (or at a minimum allows) them to
prefer their welfare and their interests over those of all other children.”
(26)

2.lawyers:
“It is thought to be certainly permissible and probably obligatory ... for the
lawyer to do any number of things that otherwise might very well be morally
criticizable.” (27) There are two sorts of case that illustrate this:

(A) Cases having to do with
“indifference to the client’s ends.”

·[see the landlord example, p.27]

·[see the example of setting aside one’s beliefs about a criminal
defendant’s guilt or innocence, p.27]

(B) Cases
having “to do with the means employed by the lawyer” to achieve the
client’s ends.

·Defending a man accused of rape and cross-examining his accuser
about her sexual history, even though you know it will be degrading and
humiliating to her and realize that ultimately it has no relevance to whether
the rape occurred.

[3.2.3.] A Tension Between Moral Reasoning and
Role-Defined Reasoning.

RDR seems to be in tension with the type of
reasoning that we typically think about as moral.

This “more universal, less particularistic” way of reasoning
involves the following ideas (28-29, emphases added):

·a “concern for individual autonomy, for the importance of
making available to each person the real opportunity to fashion a life that he
or she will find genuinely satisfying.”

·“the respect that is due to all persons because they are
persons, and the ... wrongness in viewing or using members of the moral
community solely as means to some further end, as things to be used as one
might utilize artifacts or other objects.”

·“each person who is affected [by one’s actions] is to count
equally, as one ... [there is] a strong presumption of equality among
all the members of the moral community.”[4]

In sum, MR requires that we

regard
each person’s interests and fundamental concerns and needs as presumptively of
the same worth and importance. When the needs, interests, and concerns are
of the same kind, there is presumptively, if not conclusively, no moral reason
to prefer one person’s interests over those of any others. When the
individuals are all of the same kind, when they are all persons, there is
presumptively, if not conclusively, no moral reason to accord them different
status within the moral community. (29, emphasis added)

PROBLEM: There is a seeming tension between RDR and MR,
because the former involves treating the interests and well-being of some
people (your own children, your clients, your soldiers) as more important than
those of others.

If there really is this conflict between the two sorts of
reasoning, then it seems that the professional obligations of a lawyer demand
that she behave in conflict with what moral reasoning would require.

[3.2.4.] Benefits of Role-Defined Reasoning.

On way of defending RDR against the charge that it conflicts
with MR is to point out that there are at least two benefits that RDR has over
MR:

·BENEFIT 1: moral simplification: thinking in terms of the
role one occupies provides more specific guidelines for what one ought
to do and thus makes it easier to know what one’s obligations are. It “reduce[s]
enormously the moral ambiguity and uncertainty that would otherwise prevail
in trying to sort out and establish the right and wrong ways of behaving.
Psychologically, roles give a great power and security because they make
moral life much simpler, less complex, and less vexing than it would be without
them.” (29)

·BENEFIT 2: a low risk that one will rationalize to benefit
oneself: “the appeal to one’s role seldom, if ever, creates the kind of
moral conflict that we so often worry about, namely, the conflict between
self-interest and ... doing the right thing.” (29)[5]

These benefits can help explain why so many people
are attracted to role-defined reasoning.

More to the point, they may serve to justify
this sort of reasoning. [This is especially true of the second benefit: if RDR
does minimize the probability that an individual who uses it will behave
self-interestedly, then that counts as a moral reason in its favor.]

But they cannot serve as a blanket justification for all
instances of RDR. It may turn out that, even though role-defined reasoning
is justified to some degree, it is not completely justified and on
occasion still turns out to be wrong.

So simply pointing out these benefits is not a sufficient
defense. Wasserstrom goes on to consider three possible ways to justify
role-defined reasoning and thereby resolving the tension between it and moral
reasoning…

Stopping point for Wednesday
September 1. For next time, finish reading the second article by Wasserstrom,
“Roles and Morality” (pp.33-37).

[2]
This sounds like consequentialism, but we’ll see below that it’s not—Wasserstrom’s
notion of welfare or happiness includes considerations like autonomy and
respect for persons as persons. So the normative standard he assumes in
describing MR blurs the line between consequentialism and deontology.

[3]My own example: the role of game-player,
e.g., in round-the-clock games like Survivor and Big Brother. But
note what Wasserstrom says at p.29, that role-defined reasoning is rarely used
to “justify[] personal gain.” Players of Survivor-type games who engage
in RDR are an exception to this claim.

[4]
We can see now that Wasserstrom is not assuming that utilitarianism is true and
that a deontological theory of normative ethics is false. His broad concept of
“welfare and happiness” involves both utility and deontological concerns like
autonomy and respect.

[5]
This point does not apply to my example of role-defined reasoning in the
context of Survivor-type games, in which a player might appeal to his
role as a player in order to justify deceiving someone with whom he has
established a genuine friendship during the course of the game. But on the
other hand, it doesn’t seem to apply to many cases of legal practice outside of
criminal defense, e.g., where in order to satisfy a corporate client, one must
write incorporation documents for a company that will manufacture and market a
legal but harmful product (an example that Wasserstrom himself used in the
earlier article).